Lazy Susan Food

Wonder where that name came from - but I betcha the Chinese invented the spinning food server. Thank goodness - We would have spent our entire mealtime passing the multitude of dishes if it wasn't for the huge lazy Susan at almost every meal.

And it tasted as good as it looked. Unfortunately it is not even close to Chinese food that you can find in America.

Xian

Xian was our second destination and another labor intensive site- the Terra Cotta Warriors. Amazing! This was my 3rd visit and it still takes my breath away.

Good Fortune Peach

Labor Intensive. Farming in China is generally done on a small scale and by hand -not with big machines. Then to my surprise they even add more work by masking this “good fortune” character on each peach.

Beijing 2010

We landed in Beijing after the long and full flight on Air China. The Marriot where we stayed for the next 3 nights had surprisingly soft mattresses (I was actually sort of disappointed that not one of our hotels had the typical hard mattresses that my school provided me with for my 2 years in China – I sort of wanted a little sympathy/empathy for what I endured)

1st day in Beijing was a busy day that included Tiananmen Square, a Hutong tour and Pandas. 2nd day was filled with the Great Wall, Jade Factory tour, Summer Palace and ended with a quick look at the impressive Olympic Birds Nest and the Water Cube. Janice gets the award in our group of 3 for climbing the highest on the great wall. Living in FLAT south Georgia seems to handicap me when I encounter hills and heights such as the Great Wall. The grandparents of our large family group did great climbing but to their advantage they live in San Francisco.

Good Omen

This first day of our travels I saw this outside the airplane window – I figured that a rainbow around the shadow of our plane would be a good omen for our 2 week ChinaSpree Trip. It was! China was fantastic as usual but the group that we traveled with made it even more so. Our group consisted of 19 people with 11 from one family that was made up of 3 generations. I have to tell you that when we saw this big family we were a little worried about effect they would have on the dynamics of the whole group. It was a totally positive – plus 2 of them were doctors, which was sort of like having a security blanket along for any “just in cases”. Ming our tour guide was great at accommodating all of our different ages and demands. She taught hand games to the kids, made sure that Donna’s vegetarian needs were met and even helped me get train tickets to Hangzhou when I left the group at the end of the tour. She even answered all of our questions – even the embarrassing ones.

Side Note: I have to publically thank the kids on the tour for teaching the ins and outs of the new iPad game that I had become addicted to “Plants and Zombies”. They taught me the strategies that would get me pass certain hard levels of this surprisingly devious game. Thanks a Bunch!